Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 11:06:36 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Michael Richards <michael@fastmail.ca> Cc: oliver.blasnik@de.tiscali.com, freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Intel SE7500CW2 narrowed down... Message-ID: <3DEE523C.D7984CD8@mindspring.com> References: <3DEE3F91.000019.37680@ns.interchange.ca>
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Michael Richards wrote: > >> I can tell you that the way in which we startup CPU's is quite > >> within the IA-32 spec and that it's probably about 90% that this > >> motherboard has some h0rked BIOS. > > > > I know of this BIOS / tables problem. But why is f. ex. Linux able > > to boot up without any glitch and works as fast as expected (not > > knowing it from exactly this board, but from others I tested)? > > I'm not convinced it's a tables problem as I read the spec and > verified the CPU entries in this table byte for byte. It appears > valid. Besides, Linux works and so do a host of other OSes. More than > likely we're just doing something slightly different that happens to > work find with all the other boards out there. > > My next step is to start looking at how linux works and compare it to > how FreeBSD doesn't work. You will find it in the APIC I/O code and the interrupt routing code, with a tiny part in the shipset initialization. You could fix it in FreeBSD by disregarding what the BIOS says, and manually initializing the ServerWorks chipset the way FreeBSD wants it (i.e. MPSpec v1.4, mode 2 interrupt processing compliant). FreeBSD doesn't run in real "virtual wire mode", it makes the interrupts follow Giant. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
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